Tag Archives: Stereoscopic 3D

Hi! I’ve been flat out busy; everything seems to happen at once. On the Oculus Rift front I haven’t received my CV1 yet and I’m waiting for updated news on Linden Lab’s Rift project viewer. Linden Lab are working on it but I’ve not heard any inklings of when an update with CV1 support might be released.

Long term, Linden Lab’s Rift code is the correct code to include in third party viewers; mine was just a rough stop-gap measure to satisfy immediate desires to experience Second Life and OpenSim in virtual reality. And stereoscopic 3D support should be able to be added into a viewer, taking advantage of the Lab’s Rift code stereo capabilities.

In theory, even though it’s significantly out of date compared with other viewers, the current CtrlAltStudio Viewer code could be updated to SDK 1.3 to support the CV1. I’d love to do this but really have very limited time, and there are significant changes from SDK 0.6–0.8 to 1.3. So right now I’m waiting for more news on the Lab’s Rift project viewer and my CV1.

UPDATE, 11 Apr 2016: From Friday 8 April’s Third Party Viewer meeting courtesy of Inara Pey: Linden Lab are actively working on their Rift project viewer. Some things are still not working but they hope to have an update soon. They are committed to getting it working, with the latest SDK and CV1 support. See the meeting video starting at 6:57.

I developed CtrlAltStudio Viewer as a stop-gap measure to satisfy immediate desires to experience Second Life and OpenSim in virtual reality: stereoscopic 3D was implemented while waiting for the Rift DK1 to be delivered; then DK1 and DK2 support each added when they arrived. Always with the expectation that CtrlAltStudio Viewer will be abandoned when Linden Lab finish their Rift support and other third-party viewers incorporate it.

It’s been quite a long “stop-gap”; much longer than expected! But at last there’s hope that the consumer CV1 Rift will finally be delivered, sometime in Q1 2016. Before that, a Rift SDK 1.0 version is due in December this year. Hopefully, Linden Lab will finish off their Rift support promptly for CV1 when it’s available so that their code can be adopted by other TPVs. Development of CtrlAltStudio Viewer will stop at that time.

In the meantime, I am trying to find time to keep CtrlAltStudio Viewer somewhat up to date. Unfortunately, time is in short supply for me these days. However, I have the code working with SDK 0.6 in direct mode with a basic software cursor. (There’s no hardware cursor in direct mode.) I have a few issues to sort out and will release an alpha as soon as possible, “as is”, to see how people find it. Not polished but should be usable.

After that, I may update to a more recent Firestorm codebase, or perhaps update to SDK 0.7 or even SDK 1.0. It just depends on Oculus and Firestorm updates, people’s needs, and my time availability.

UPDATE: I’ve promoted this to be the recommended alpha release for Windows.

This alpha release of the CtrlAltStudio Viewer updates to the Firestorm 4.6.7 codebase and is available for people to try out. Notably, this update includes Linden Lab’s Project Interesting code, which should make loading world content significantly faster. Details of this and other changes and known issues can be found in the Firestorm release notes.

This alpha also fixes a crash some people experienced with the preceding 1.2.3.42796 Alpha.

Please note that this alpha still does not work with Rift direct mode and Advanced Lighting Model needs to be turned on. It is built using the 0.4.4 Rift SDK.

This alpha release of the CtrlAltStudio Viewer updates to the Firestorm 4.6.7 codebase and is available for people to try out. Notably, this update includes Linden Lab’s Project Interesting code, which should make loading world content significantly faster. Details of this and other changes and known issues can be found in the Firestorm release notes.

Please note that this alpha still does not work with Rift direct mode and Advanced Lighting Model needs to be turned on. It is built using the 0.4.4 Rift SDK.